Spin Doctors for Obamacare – by Michelle Malkin

Lights, camera, agitprop! The curtains opened on yet another artfully staged performance of Obamacare Theater this week. One hundred and fifty doctors took their places on the plush lawn outside the West Wing — many acting like “Twilight” groupies with cameras instead of credible medical professionals. The president approved the scenery: “I am thrilled to have all of you here today, and you look very spiffy in your coats.”

White House wardrobe assistants guaranteed the “spiffy.” As the New York Post’s Charles Hurt reported, the physicians “were told to bring their white lab coats to make sure that TV cameras captured the image.” President Obama’s aides hastily handed out costumes to those who came in suits or dresses before the doc-and-pony show began.

But while Halloween came early to the Potomac, these partisan single-payer activists in White House-supplied clothing aren’t fooling anyone.

Obama’s spin doctors belong to a group called Doctors for America (DFA), which reportedly supplied the white lab coats. The White House event was organized in conjunction with DFA and Organizing for America, Obama’s campaign outfit.

OFA and DFA are behind a massive new Obamacare ad campaign, letter-writing campaign and doctor-recruitment campaign. The supposedly “grassroots” nonprofit DFA is a spin-off of Doctors for Obama, a 2008 campaign arm that aggressively pushed the Democrats’ government health care takeover. DFA claims to have thousands of members with a “variety of backgrounds.” But there’s little diversity in their views on socialized medicine (98 percent want a taxpayer-funded public insurance option) — or in their political contributions.

DFA president and co-founder Dr. Vivek Murthy, an internal medicine physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an instructor at Harvard Medical School, served as a member of Obama’s Health Policy Advisory Committee and the New England Steering Committee during the 2008 presidential campaign.

DFA vice president Dr. Alice Chen of Los Angeles is an Obama donor and avowed supporter of Organizing for America, Obama’s campaign shop run by the Democratic National Committee. On Monday, she posted on the OFA website with an appeal to Democratic activists for letters to the editor in support of Obama’s “health care reform.”

DFA “senior adviser” Jacob Hacker is an Obamacare architect who laughed at criticism of the plan being a Trojan horse for single-payer coverage. “It’s not a Trojan horse, right?” he retorted at a far-left Tides Foundation conference on health care.

“It’s just right there! I’m telling you. We’re going to get there.”

And here’s a brief political donation history of other top DFA docs compiled by Brian Faughnan at theconservatives.com:

Dr. Hershey Garner (who stood on stage with Obama at the White House event): more than $10,000 in donations to Democratic candidates since 2001.

Dr. Winfred Parnell: More than $5,700 in donations to Democrats since 2001.

Dr. Michael Newman: $4,550 in donations to Democrats since 2001.

Dr. Boyd Shook: $3,500 in donations to Democrats since 2002.

Dr. Jan Sarnecki: $3,400 in donations to Democrats since 2004.

Dr. Amanda McKinney (who also flanked Obama at the White House event): $2,750 in donations to Democratic candidates since 2001.

Dr. Tracy Nelson: $1,500 in donations to Obama.

Dr. Stanton McKenna: $1,000 in donations to Democrats since 2001.

Dr. Jason Schneider: $600 in donations to Democrats since 2001.

Dr. Biron Baker: $500 donated to Obama last year.

Dr. Nick Perencevich: $500 in donations to Democrats since 2008.

Dr. Elaine Bradshaw: $500 in donations to Obama last year.

Who unveiled Doctors for America earlier this spring? No, not ordinary citizens outside the Beltway. The decidedly un-grassroots sponsors of the Doctors for America launch were Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and the left-wing Center for American Progress, which is run by liberal operative John Podesta and underwritten by far-left billionaire George Soros.

CAP is a lead organization in the Health Care for America Now coalition, the so-called “grassroots” lobbying group for Obama’s health care takeover legislation run out of 1825 K Street in Washington, D.C., with a $40 million budget. CAP is also the parent group of Think Progress, the far-left website leading the smear campaign against fiscally conservative activists who protested at congressional town halls this summer. And several CAP alumni are now leading the Obamacare push at the Department of Health and Human Services, including special HHS assistant Michael Halle and HHS Director Jeanne Lambrew, a former senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who worked on health policy in the Clinton administration.

CAP/HCAN’s most recent initiative? Bussing protesters to the private homes of health care executives last week to bully them over the public option — even as many health care executives line the pockets of Obama administration officials and allies lobbying on their behalf.

It’s all in keeping with the elaborate Kabuki productions that have marked Team Obama’s efforts to manufacture support for government-run health care. They’ve been doctoring it up from Day One.

We all knew this already. This isn't news. It just reaffirms what we already knew to be true.

CowboyUp

If you didn't brig a lab coat for the photo op, the WH has spares to lend you. How phonier can they get?

keithtruth

Michelle Malkin, you may not need it but I want to encourage you not to stop your type of investigative journalism, you have beeen hounded by the left and it has taken courage and persistence to continue. Nice work don't stop.

http://thesustainableenterprisefieldbook.net/ Shakira

I don't understand this article. Are you saying that doctors can't possibly comprise a grassroots group (my meaning of “grassroots” here: coming from among ordinary americans, who are NOT bureaucrats, and who are NOT PAID to lobby members of congress)? How could you possibly think there are simply NO DOCTORS “out here” who could sympathize with their patients who can't afford regular treatment because they have no insurance? I'm sure the specialists you hang out with have no time/interest in folks with lesser means, but they don't comprise the entire spectrum of the medical profession. Thank God in Heaven. (And I emphasized “out here” because you obviously live somewhere in the U.S. where everyone is either healthy and insured, and therefore unconcerned about the obscene rise in insurance costs, due mostly to the obscene profits of the insurance companies.)

Are you saying that OBAMA organized and maybe even paid these docs to come for a photo op? My kids' pediatrician has been a part of OFA, as have I, and she would have PAID to be a part of that group on the West Wing, so as to let the President know of her strong support for health care reform! Moreover, what are you angry about? The fact that they were sitting there at all, as doctors, or that they were sitting there in their white coats – some owned, some borrowed?

dkosloff

“How could you possibly think there are simply NO DOCTORS “out here” who could sympathize with their patients who can't afford regular treatment because they have no insurance?” Any such doctor who truly sympathized with such patients would join together with other like-minded doctors to provide inexpensive regular treatment. They might also direct such folks to one or more of the many welfare or charitable sources of medical insurance. But I will grant you that there are a few short-sighted doctors who wish to resort to the hellish slavery of socialized medicine so that they can continue to fund their opulent lifestyles with money forcibly taken from others.

http://www.tarandfeathers.shugartmedia.com/ Tar_and_Feathers

This reminds me of a funny TV commercial from the Sixties written by Stan Freberg. The narrator says, “Nine out of ten doctors recommend Chung King chow mein,” The camera pans through all of the seated doctors, and eventually it becomes apparent that they’re all Asian except for one Caucasian. You couldn't get away with that sort of thing nowadays, but funny is funny.

1) A group of doctors support health care reform2) They are Democrats3) They were in white coats (they are doctors — at least they weren't wearing flight suits)4) ???????????

This is “investigative journalism”? How? Why?

Bonus question: If Jews who question Israeli political actions are “self-hating Jews,” and Malkin defends the unconstitutional detainment of US citizens of Japanese decent during WWII, does that make Malkin a “self-loathing Asian”? If not, why not?

bubba4

She doesn't even supply evidence to her “facts” about the coats…or if any of the rest of the doctors had given money to Republicans…

Hey bubba3 and Shakira. Four of nine doctors, or 45%, said they “would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement” if Congress passes the plan the Democratic majority and White House have in mind.

More than 800,000 doctors were practicing in 2006, the government says. Projecting the poll's finding onto that population, 360,000 doctors would consider quitting.

Yes, Two of every three (67%) of practicing physicians oppose the medical overhaul plan under consideration in Washington, and now over 45% would think about shutting down their practices or retiring early if it were adopted, a new IBD/TIPP Poll has found when polling 3000 doctors.

http://www.tarandfeathers.shugartmedia.com/ Tar_and_Feathers

Lighten up Francis. Can you not see the humor in 150 doctors on the White House lawn all decked out in white lab coats? I wish I'd been there. It probably looked like a setting for some Monty Python sketch. Sadly, at taxpayers expense. At best the whole thing was silly. At worst, government funded burlesque. Meanwhile the Obama administration and the Dems remain clueless towards their little show biz gaffs they think are passing for legitimate PR.

bubba4

I know…it makes you long for the days of Bush in a flight suit with a stuffed crotch. Where have our REAL heroes gone? Boo-hoo…